


The Best I've Never Had

by deliciousshame



Series: AoKuro Week 2015 [5]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: AoKuro Week, AoKuro Week 2015, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-15
Updated: 2015-05-15
Packaged: 2018-03-30 07:57:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3929008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deliciousshame/pseuds/deliciousshame
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Really, what Daiki found out during the Seirin-Rakuzan match shouldn't have surprised him. He should have noticed the pattern.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Best I've Never Had

It’s hard to remember a time when Tetsu didn’t matter. It’s hard to remember anything before Teikou these days. He’s Aomine the ace of the Generation of Miracles now. Hard to find someone who has heard of basket but doesn’t know him. 

He can remember their first meeting. Tetsu playing by himself, alone in the gym. How terrible he was at basketball, something Daiki couldn’t sympathise with, and yet how he refused to admit defeat. He’d felt it then, _this guy is something special_. He wanted to play basket with him. He wanted to spend time with him. He changed his habits a little; ended up practising with him every night. It felt right.

Tetsu came to him and told him he felt like giving up, that he didn’t think he could contribute to the team. Daiki didn’t understand why he felt dread creeping in at these words. He knew they belonged on the same court. The last thing he wanted was for Tetsu to abandon. He needed to stay here, with him. 

Akashi walked in and changed everything without a second thought. No matter what else he has done, Daiki will always be grateful to him for handing him his shadow. It had been validation, in a way. Daiki wasn’t the only one who was saw Tetsu and recognised him as something worthwhile. It wasn’t Tetsu’s fault that guys like Midorima or Murasakibara couldn’t see it. Daiki knew, and he knew they’d see it if they gave him half a chance. 

He messed up his first game. That was another thing Daiki couldn’t comprehend, this nervousness when playing basketball. It always felt natural to him, the ball an extension of his body, as easily controlled as his hand. Daiki wasn’t going to let that stop them. They had places to go together. He’d been willing to fight the coach about it, he’d been willing to risk his own middle school years of basketball on it. There was no way Tetsu would have let him down. 

He was right. Of course he was. Tetsu did it. He gained the respect of all their teammates. He got too much respect from Kise. Daiki was endlessly bothered by how clingy both Satsuki and he could get.

Despite them, it was the best part of his years at Teikou. He was playing with Tetsu. Together they were invincible. After practice they went home together pretty much every day. Each time he arrived home with the feeling of another day well spent. 

He had friends before, neighbors and classmates and basketball partners. He will always have Satsuki. None of them were anything like Tetsu.

Then, out of nowhere, it happened. They were talking. Daiki doesn’t even remember what about. He said something, Tetsu smiled, and all Daiki could think about was how much he wanted him to smile again, and whether hugging him would make it happen or whether more would be needed. The second after he’d froze, wondering why he was thinking such things about Tetsu.

It never went away, after. He found himself wanting to touch. He wanted Tetsu for himself. He understood now why he didn’t want Satsuki or Kise touching him. He understood only too well.

He wasn’t stupid. He was a guy. Tetsu wouldn’t want that from him. If you asked Daiki, he probably wouldn’t want that from another guy either. He held it all back. It was the best choice for everyone. He still had Tetsu. He didn’t want to risk him. 

Thinking back on it makes him laugh in derision. He’d have gotten a polite rejection. Tetsu would have done all he could to make it as painless as possible. Instead he chose not to talk and lost him completely. Gone are the times when his greatest worry had been that Tetsu apparently was a walking lie detector and that he’d found out. 

He started getting better at some point after that. He wanted to believe Tetsu. He wanted more than anything for this to be a phase, for stronger opponents to come out of nowhere and challenge him. 

It wasn’t realistic. He defeated Inoue easily, saw his own despair reflected in his eyes. It made him lose perspective. He said things that he realises now hurt Tetsu, deeply. 

He never stopped caring about Tetsu, it’s just that the feelings he wouldn’t act on had been put somewhere deep in the back of his mind, locked away for both their sakes and, after, buried under growing worry for his fading love of basket turning into overwhelming ennui. He could beat any team carelessly. The other people at the club were laughingly weak. His strength became so devastating he was dispensed from practice. It was too much. He can tell now how he couldn’t handle it then, how he was seeing the breach between him and others, between him and Tetsu, deepen and deepen and leave him alone on the other side, unreachable. Tetsu just wasn’t good enough to cross. 

He accepted it. The only one who can defeat me is me: the new _status quo_. It severed his ties with Tetsu. It sent him to Touou, where no one cared about him as long as he showed up to win matches. It shoved his whole life into a boring routine, sleep-food-school-Mai-chan-basket, the monotony only broken by the few he acknowledged as his equals. 

Tetsu was still playing. That was good, that he didn’t gave up on basket, just on them. He won against Kise. He won against Midorima. He won with his new light, some guy named Kagami. 

Rationally he was aware that Tetsu would never be a one-man team. If he was winning he had to have someone who knew how to receive his passes. If that someone was going to inherit his position, he’d better be worth it. 

To this day he still wonders if the shock would have been less brutal if he had been. He can’t say. At the time the idea of being replaced by someone this powerless had hit him hard. It made sense; he’d been too much for Tetsu. Obviously his replacement needed to be weaker. But this weak? He couldn’t be what Tetsu deserved. Daiki couldn’t let himself be exchanged for _that_. 

If he had to slaughter Tetsu’s team in his efforts to show him how misguided he was, so be it. They wouldn’t have stand a chance even if he didn’t step a foot on the court. 

Turn outs he was wrong. Playing against Tetsu, instead of beside him, felt wrong and good, right and not, but it was infinitely better than playing his usual opponents. Tetsu vowed to beat him. Kagami almost rose to the challenge. He had to get a little bit serious. 

He won. Like there were any doubts. He remembers standing on the court, thinking _I won again_ , no joy associated with that thought, only bitterness that turned into anger when a fucking bench warmer dared insult Tetsu like he had any idea about what had been going on. 

The games went on, more or less interchangeable with no worthy opponent. He beat Kise, that was fun for a while, then he was forbidden to play in the finals, damn Satsuki. Time passed, it was boring, whatever. Tetsu kept winning his games and developing new skills, which didn’t surprise him at all. He had created a whole style by himself. Something about it was worrying him, but he didn’t know what.

He didn’t get to talk with Tetsu until he was dragged to the onsen by his team, and there he was, lying on a bench, taken out by the baths and his feeble constitution. It was instinct to buy him his drink, Tetsu’s preferences not forgotten. 

It was awkward like it was toward the end of their basket, tension lingering heavy in the air. He talked about the vanishing drive. Tetsu wasn’t deterred, determined to win against him. He really hadn’t changed, at all. It was with fatality that he tried to tell him not to get his hopes up, then Kagami showed up, giving birth again to the impulse to crush until he couldn’t stand up. 

He couldn’t follow through on that impulse. Most of that game is a blur in his memory, flashes of feeling, Tetsu, the zone, Kagami, his blood burning in response to a real threat. All that took a back seat to what happened after, the state of shock numbing all, even Tetsu and his request for a missed fist bump, long ago. 

He stayed in that second state all night, staring at the ceiling, unable to focus.

Tetsu called soon after and he went without questions. What else would he do when Tetsu calls? He wants to learn how to shoot, he said, like that was a perfectly reasonable request to make of someone you just beat, someone you didn’t really talk to in months. Daiki argued without meaning it and folded in seconds. Losing to him sucked, but _wanting_ to play for the first time in forever more than made up for it. Tetsu gave him that.

As they tried to get Tetsu to put the ball in the basket, he remarked on how familiar this setting was, a flashback to a better time. Daiki himself had noticed that. He got the urge to touch, to enter his space and not let go, for the first time in… he couldn’t say. He didn’t, of course. What good would that do?

Tetsu put his newfound skills to use: defeating Yosen, getting them all the way to the final against Akashi, playing the most insane match he never had the... let’s say pleasure to watch. 

It brings him, them, here, trying to hide tears from Satsuki, knowing he’s failing. He deliberately kept himself from the one person he always wanted because of the other thing that had made his life worthwhile, when getting the first was literally the key to the second. It was always Tetsu, he was the answer all along.

Enough. Enough depression by himself, feeling lonely and bored and hopeless, enough wasted time, enough lies. Tetsu hasn’t won just yet, but in his heart he knows the victory is going to be his. Tetsu never let him down. He won’t start now. 

He wipes his eyes angrily, evades Satsuki’s embarrassed concern and pulls his phone. _Congratulations on your win. When you’ve got time, call me. I have something to tell you._ There, sent. No matter what happens, no more regrets.


End file.
